Starting the day with a hot cup of coffee is becoming much more expensive. According to Eurostat, the average price of coffee in the European Union (EU) in August was 16.9% higher than at the same time last year, with Lithuania experiencing the biggest increase.
At the same time, the country’s cafes say that the habits of coffee drinkers have not changed much despite the price rises.
According to the EU’s statistics office, those who prefer their coffee with sugar and milk may be particularly hard-hit, as the prices of these products have risen even more in recent years: the price of fresh whole milk has increased by an average of 24.3%, while the price of fresh low-fat milk has risen by 22.2%. The price of sugar in the EU has risen by 33.4%.
In terms of price increases for each product, Lithuania recorded some of the highest price increases for three out of four products: coffee, fresh low-fat milk and whole milk, with price increases of around 45.8%.
Nerijus Pudziuvelis of the Huracan Coffee chain says that it is not only more expensive raw materials that make a cup of coffee more expensive, but also logistics, electricity prices, rising rents for coffeeshops and a doubling of the outdoor cafe tax in Vilnius.
“Coffee itself as a raw material is getting more expensive, but moderately, and the key things are that we are adding the cost of electricity, the cost of renting premises, the fees for outdoor cafes. There are many elements around coffee, which are slowly increasing, which also increases the price of a cup,” Pudziuvelis said.
According to him, a cup of coffee in the chain’s cafes has increased in price by about 10-12% over the year, but there is no intention to increase the price further.
“We can see that the number of people in cafes has decreased in general, people are naturally saving more, and there are additional costs – both electricity and heating. And teleworking contributes, when people don’t go to offices in the city, it leads to fewer people in the city. The number of tourists this year is also far from the pre-pandemic numbers,” he said.
However, he believes that the culture of coffee drinking has not changed: “As much as people used to crave a cup of black coffee or vegan latte, they still do. We wouldn’t like it to become a luxury item, but that depends on many factors.”
Lina Kaminskaite, marketing and communications manager at Reitan Convenience Lithuania, which manages the Caffeine cafe chain, says that over the years the price of coffee has increased by around 10-15%, depending on the size of the cup and the preparation of the product, but the habits of people who like coffee have been established and have not changed for years.
“However, this price rise is also due to our updated coffee recipes and the fact that we are using more coffee beans in our coffee preparation. Rising wages, rising prices of energy resources and raw materials have also had an impact on prices. Milk prices alone have increased three times this year,” Kaminskaite said.
“The coffee culture is strong enough in our country, and we pay a lot of attention to the renovation of cafes and the expansion of the network, because we notice that customers like to spend time here, to socialise, so they visit cafes not only to drink coffee, but also to chat. We do not see any major changes in consumer habits so far,” she said.
According to Caffeine, the most popular coffees are the classic medium-sized cups – latte and cappuccino – and in summer – cold caramel macchiato.
According to Eurostat, sugar saw the biggest appreciation among coffee ingredient in the EU over the year, doubling in price in Poland, followed by Estonia (81.2%), Latvia (58.3%), Bulgaria (44.9%) and Cyprus (43.2%).
Meanwhile, coffee prices rose the most in Finland (43.6%), followed by Lithuania (39.9%), Sweden (36.7%), Estonia (36.4%) and Hungary (34.3%).
The highest annual price increases for low-fat milk among EU member states were in Hungary (51.7%), Lithuania (46.8%), Croatia (43.5%), the Czech Republic (43.3%) and Latvia (40.1%), while the highest annual price increases for whole milk were recorded in Lithuania (50.2%), Croatia (41.2%), Estonia (38.9%), Germany (30.6%) and Hungary (30.1%).
The data showed that prices for all coffee commodities increased in all EU member states except for Malta, where the price of fresh low-fat milk remained stable. (LRT/Business World Magazine)